Gallery of the Dead

Thirteen

Hunter and Garcia’s office was at the far end of the Robbery Homicide Division’s floor, inside the famous Police Administration Building in downtown LA. The office was a claustrophobic twenty-two-square-meter concrete box, with barely more than two desks, three old-fashioned filing cabinets and a large white magnetic board pushed up against the south wall, but it was still a completely separate enclosure to the rest of the RHD, which, if nothing else, kept prying eyes and the loud buzzing of voices locked out.

Hunter had received an email from Kevin White less than an hour ago, enclosing a copy of the crime-scene forensics report together with a.zip file containing all the images captured by the official photographer. Hunter had spent the last half-hour printing them all out and pinning them to the magnetic board, when Captain Blake pushed open their office door and stepped inside.

Barbara Blake had taken over the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division’s leadership several years ago, after the retirement of its long-standing captain, William Bolter. Elegant, attractive, with long black hair and mysterious dark eyes that could make most people shiver with a single stare, Captain Blake wasn’t easily intimidated. After so many years and so many different roles within the force, very little ever unsettled her, but for the next full minute she didn’t say a word to either of her two detectives. All she did was study the pictures on the white board with a disbelieving look.

‘The victim was skinned?’ she finally asked in a breath that nearly failed her.

‘Almost entirely, Captain,’ Garcia replied, letting himself slump back on his chair.

‘Alive?’

‘Couldn’t be determined at the scene.’ This time the reply came from Hunter. ‘We’re still waiting for the autopsy report to confirm it. If we’re lucky, we might still get it this morning.’

‘The killer also took her hands and feet,’ Garcia added.

The captain’s stare paused on him for an instant before returning to the board. She stepped closer and her eyes found the close-up photograph of what the killer had carved into the victim’s back.

‘What the actual hell?’ Among the carvings, Captain Blake was able to identify a few letters. ‘Is this supposed to say something?’

Garcia got to his feet. ‘It’s actually Latin, Captain.’ He approached the board and showed her how several of the lines should have connected but didn’t. When he was done, Captain Blake shook her head as if she had been temporarily stunned. Her eyes narrowed, trying to make out the words.

‘It means — “beauty is all around her”, Captain.’

Blank turned into skeptical.

‘I don’t get it,’ she finally said.

Garcia didn’t suffer from insomnia but, just like Hunter, he too had had very little sleep overnight. After returning from Linda Parker’s crime scene, he had spent most of the early hours of the morning trying to understand at least a fraction of the madness he had seen inside that house... the blood, the carvings, the skinned body, the missing feet and hands... No matter which path he tried to follow inside his head, they all seemed to end up at the exact same well.

‘It’s early days, Captain,’ Garcia said, walking back to his desk. ‘But a half theory sort of emerged last night at the crime scene.’

‘All right,’ the captain said with interest. ‘And what is this half theory?’

Garcia knew that he was about to enter Crazyland. He sat back on his chair, rested his elbows on the armrests and touched fingertip against fingertip.

‘That maybe this killer thinks of himself as an artist.’ He paused and indicated the photos on the board. ‘And that craziness you see there would be nothing more than his “art piece”, which he considers to be a work of beauty.’

The captain’s gaze had returned to the photos on the board, but it slowly moved back to Garcia.

‘Are you joking?’ She almost choked on her next words. ‘An artist? A work of beauty? What?’

Garcia nodded. ‘To the killer — maybe — yes.’

‘That’s absurd.’

Garcia looked at Hunter for help.

He got none.

‘Indeed it is,’ Garcia agreed. ‘And to be honest, no matter how inventive we might believe we are, we would never have come up with such a crazy theory if not for the message the killer carved into this poor girl’s back.’

On the board, Captain Blake found the picture that showed the carvings.

‘Beauty is all around her?’ she asked. ‘Is that what you said all that nonsense translates to?’

‘That’s it. And I know how crazy it all sounds, Captain, but it also makes some sort of crazy sense.’

Glaring at her detective, the captain threw her hands up. ‘Well, I’m all ears, Carlos. Please, by all means, enlighten me.’ She grabbed a fold-up chair that was leaning against one of the walls and took a seat.

Garcia got up and walked back over to the picture board.

‘Have a look at these, Captain,’ he began, indicating the photographs taken of the walls, the furniture and the floor inside Linda Parker’s bedroom, all of it completely smeared in blood.

Captain Blake shrugged. ‘Yeah, so? This is the Ultra Violent Crimes Unit, isn’t it? Ninety-eight percent of all crime scenes you investigate look like that or worse.’

‘That’s true. But in all of them there’s an obvious reason for all the blood.’ He shook his head. ‘Not here.’

‘What? You’re telling me that you can’t find a reason to justify all those blood smears?’ Her questioning stare ran from Garcia to Hunter then back to Garcia. ‘How about a struggle?’ she suggested. ‘A desperate victim, covered in blood, trying to get away from her attacker and stumbling everywhere: the walls... the furniture... isn’t that a possibility?’

‘Our first thought too,’ Garcia agreed. ‘But have a closer look at these pictures.’ He indicated a group of three photographs showing furniture pieces inside Linda Parker’s bedroom — a chest of drawers, a dressing table and a bedside table — the pieces all had blood smeared against them. ‘If all this blood was the result of our victim desperately running away from her killer, then what’s missing from these photos?’

The captain studied the images for a long moment.

‘A mess,’ she said, finally understanding what Garcia was referring to. ‘There’s no mess.’

‘Precisely,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘Nothing was out of place. Nothing had been knocked over anywhere. The vase, the alarm clock, the reading lamp, the picture frames, her makeup, her jewelry... every object in that room seemed to be exactly where it was supposed to be. There was nothing on the floor, either. Not even a hairclip. Trust me, we looked. If she’d been running for her life, leaving bloodstains all over the place while colliding with her furniture, her stuff should’ve been all over the room.’

The captain couldn’t fault Garcia’s logic, which right then began to scare her a little bit. ‘So what you’re saying is you think that all those blood smears and smudges everywhere were done on purpose? To transform the room into a... piece... a sculpture... a canvas... whatever.’

Once again, her stare played between her two detectives.

This time, Hunter finally replied.

‘Right now, that’s what it looks like, Captain.’